St John management applies tourniquet to workers’ throats

Charitable organisation, St John, which operates ambulance services nationwide, as well as other medical services, has been engaging in anti-worker actions during recent industrial negotiations to conclude a collective agreement.

“It is important ambulance officers are identifiable in an emergency environment where circumstances can change rapidly. Not complying is a health and safety risk not only to the employee but to fellow officers and other emergency workers. While there is only a very small number of ambulance professionals refusing to wear hi-vis vests, we have advised First Union and our staff that those employees not complying with this requirement will receive a 10 per cent deduction of wages.”

How cutting wages improves safety for workers is not made clear by Ms Lane.

“When a crew arrived in mufti at a station in Auckland this morning their manager snapped that ‘if someone dies because they didn’t let you in be it on your heads’. This comes on the same day station managers in the Bay of Plenty told several ambulance officers over the phone that industrial action was cancelled, even though this isn’t true.”

First Union was not a party to the new collective agreement. St John stated on it’s webpage,

It is our preference to have nationally consistent terms and conditions for all St John employees, accordingly, St John and the four union parties have made provision for the First Union members to become party to the new Collective Agreement should they wish

The statement continued with this ominous ‘rider’;

If First Union decides not to become party to the new Collective Agreement, St John will continue to work through the various options available.

The union representing over 1000 St John Ambulance staff has today received confirmation from the Employment Relations Authority that St John has lodged an application to withdraw from bargaining without concluding a collective agreement.

If St John were to be successful they would be the first company to withdraw from bargaining without concluding a collective agreement under the 2015 amendments to the Employment Relations Act.

Before the law change, parties bargaining for a collective agreement were required to conclude that agreement unless there was genuine reason not to. The change means that a collective agreement does not have to be concluded, however parties must still deal with each other in good faith.

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The Act provides some protections against parties that end bargaining by deadlocking on one issue. Specifically, either party can seek a declaration from the Employment Relations Authority (the Authority) about whether bargaining has concluded. The process is discussed in more detail below.

Jared Abbott, spokesperson for Ambulance Professionals First, the network within FIRST Union representing ambulance officers, said the application confirms what the union suspected: that St John had no intention of reaching an agreement.

“St John have spent less than two hours with us at the table since we started our protest actions. Applying to conclude bargaining now is outrageous. This is no way to treat your staff.”

Mr Abbott said that despite writing to the company on several occasions and requesting a proposed collective agreement, St John repeatedly refused to make a formal offer.

Ambulance Professionals First has also written to St John highlighting how no collective agreement was presented to the ratification meetings for the smaller unions who agreed to settle, a requirement under the law for a collective agreement to become operative.

“We’re astounded with how unprofessional St John has been. Ambulance staff just want fair recognition for the hard work they do. This is only going to get more staff off-side,” said Abbott.

We are Straight Up – WhakaponoWe act with honesty, courage and kindness.

They even have ‘badges’ proudly displayed on their webpage;

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Obviously St John’s “five values” do not extend to their own workers.

Curiously, whilst St John proudly announced it’s collective agreement with four other unions on its “News Articles” page, it made no mention of it’s application to the Employment Relations Authority to abandon negotiation with First Union;

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Neither has it disclosed to the public on it’s website that it is taking draconian steps to dock ambulance drivers’ pay packets by 10% for wearing shirts bearing union messages.

Is St John ashamed to present this information on their website, where public eyes can see what the organisation is doing to it’s ambulance drivers? It is evidently not a “good look” that an organisation nearly a thousand years old, and dedicated to helping people, is screwing its own staff.

Deductions may only be made from an employee’s pay if they are required by law, agreed to by the employee or are overpayments in some circumstances.

However, it appears that St John is stretching an exemption to what is known as a “partial strike“;

Employees strike when a number of employees totally or partially:

break their employment agreement

stop work or don’t accept some or all the work they usually do

reduce their normal output, performance, or rate of work.

Employees don’t have to stop work completely for them to be on strike.

However, one suspects that more reasonable-minded people would find it difficult to define a “partial strike” as wearing a shirt. If that is St John’s justification for docking ambulance drivers’ pay, then it may be on very shaky ground, both legally and morally.

Whether by luck, or clever design, this has all transpired over the Year’s End/New Year period when current affairs programmes such as The Nation and Q+A are on hiatus, and even Radio NZ is operating on a “summer holiday programme”. The later is closer to listening to The Breeze rather than serious news and current affairs.

Once the public begin to understand the machinations of St John’s management, that organisation’s reputation may risk a real hit. “A good reputation” as Colin Beveridge once reflected on, “is hard-won and easily lost. But the lost reputation has invariably been given away by the actions of the holder, rather than been taken away by somebody else.”

Indeed… poor Michael might even have a heart attack… lets hope that kiss from his mother does it all better…

Frank , your right, .

This is simply following the time worn tactics of the neo liberal. You will find embedded into that organisation a far right wing neo liberal , more often than not… a member of the National party by proxy…

Who , by surreptitious and vicious means seeks to further the aims of that neo liberal party by using the ‘ no uniforms , no union’ angle…

Surreptitious by using the emotive environment of the ‘caring’ professions for people as a beachhead for privatization.

Follow the money trail in regards to the neo liberal . Always.

And there you will find their true ugly motives.

They will also always inevitably seek to use ‘ govt funding cuts ‘ as the other motive to destabilize and justify their actions for their long term goal of privatization – whereby those in senior management stand to gain an obscene amount of wealth from that process.

We’ve seen it all before and its a wonder that they still keep trying despite people now having 32 years of neo liberal experience with their stealth techniques and lies.

What I get from your comment, Michael, is that workers are slaves, should “know their place”, stay silent, and do their masters’ bidding. That is a very 18th century view of employee-employer relationships.

St John management have over-reacted and do not come out of this looking very sympathetic to their employees. They should be thoroughly ashamed of their actions, as should you, Michael.

So, you were management then? No wonder your views are so unreasonable and vindictive toward workers. People like you, Andrew, are not fit for management roles. Your attitude probably contributed to making First Union more militant!!

Jesus, your sentence makes no f***ing sense at all. WHAT are you trying to say?

I’m gonna run through a few possibilities here, with possible corrections [in parentheses] to indicate where extra information should have been included, or *asterisks* to indicate where information should be omitted…

1) From my previous employment with St John First Union [I find it] is a very militant union and [they] are extremely difficult to deal with*,*[.]

Sally, Donations to St John go to the whole umbrella organisation consisting of St john youth, volunteer workers at sports events, property management company and some goes to St John ambulance. If you think all your donation goes to the ambulance service you are sadly mistaken.

Mike, you may be correct in what you say, but once St John’s reputation is tarnished, I doubt if the public will understand – much less care – for the fine distinction you make. There will be many who question the culture of an organisation that permits some of its workers to be treated in such an appalling manner.

Why do they need so many unions to represent the St John ambulance officers?
Are they all doing the same job nationwide, or do Auckland Ambo officers do a different job to, say, Dunedin ones?
Would it not make sense for them all to be represented by the one union?

Can someone with better journalism skills than me check whether St.John are actually a charitable organisation in the sense we’d expect? A worker from another emergency organisation told me they were a for-profit company headquartered in the UK? Can they be both?